How I entertain my toddler child when travelling

I have had to travel a lot over the last couple of years, since my son turned 3 months old! Hence, I decided to write down a few tips (also learned from mistakes) that have made my travels with my child a lot easier.

When he was a baby, I could amuse my child just by imitating a mobile with fingers. That was all needed if he was bored. However, it is difficult to manage a toddler child as he/she starts walking or moving around on his/her own. After they attain the age of one, they learn to throw tantrums for reasons parents may sometimes not understand. Long distance travel which binds them to one place for a long time can become unbearable for your tiny tots. We need to keep them engaged throughout, if they aren't sleeping. The following are a few suggestions based on what kept my toddler son engaged during my travels.

Apps

Kid-friendly tabs like ipads, samsung galaxy tab 3, micromax canvas tabby, kindle, fuhu nabi jr and leappad ultra are some of the popular ones. They come packaged with some in-built apps for kids and provide parental control options. If you don't have one of these, you can use any tab or smartphone and download the apps prior to your travel. A few great apps to entertain your infant are listed below. You don't need to be online when you use them.

Talking Ginger, Talking Tom and Talking Paul (available for download from App Store and on Google Play): As they develop their language skills, these "talking" apps bring a lot of fun to toddler kids. Besides repeating our words, they provide options to brush the teeth or feed these cute animals. My son loves to pop the bubbles or tickle the ginger cat and then laugh out loud with the cat. He also seems to be fascinated with the way Paul, the Panda juggles the balls.

Elmo loves ABCs (available at App Store and Play store): This app is aimed at kids learning to identify the letters of the alphabet in a fun way, through the sesame street puppets especially, from the most loved Elmo, just by looking at whom my boy can't stop giggling. Besides tracing (you may have to help here), find-the-hidden-things and drawing/doodling, there are a few sesame street videos on the alphabet. The basic version has only 3 letters. The rest can be accessed with the pro version.

Fischer Price Laugh and Learn (Appstore and Playstore): Learn the alphabet, numbers and shapes through fischer price characters and songs. Unlike the Elmo app, you can swipe through the pictorial representations of all the letters and numbers, one by one.

iReading - Classic Fairy Tales Collection I, II and III (iPad only): This is a read-along app for fairy tale classics like Pinocchio and Peter Pan and moral stories like the Crow and the water jug and the Fox and the grapes. It was earlier available on Google Play but was stopped some time back. There is a separate app for each story. Some of the dialogues in the classic stories seem to be taken from the Disney movies.

My First Words: Visual dictionaries for 12+ months, 18+ months and 24+ months old babies, classified by these age groups.

YouTube Kids: You can download the short rhymes with the offline option and then play later.
It's a good idea not to let your child use these on a daily basis (when not travelling) as he/she might get bored of them soon.
International flights provide in-flight TV for your entertainment. Most of them have kids channels and animated movies. The challenge is to convince your toddler to wear the earphones. Even if they oblige, they may not keep them for more than 10 minutes!

Books

A lot of screen watching puts strain on the young eyes, to avoid which, you can use other ways to engage your child. Listing a few of my child's fav books. These can be carried wherever you go:

The eyes game, by Herve Tullet: Each page of this board book has a face (of a human/cat/robot…) with cut-outs where eyes should have been. Hold them in front of your eyes. You can imagine how your child feels when the eyes in the pictures are moving ;-)
Knuffle Bunny, by Mo Willems: Another loved story by another popular children's author. My toddler loves listening to this one as he too speaks a language similar to Trixie's: "aggle flabble gabble".
If you give a cat a cupcake, by Laura Numeroff: Contains large illustrations of a cat doing crazy stuff like eating a cupcake to swimming, to building sand castles, to rowing and much more.
Little Miss Muffet, by Child's Play: This is an extension of the popular nursery rhyme where along with the spider, little Miss Muffet is frightened away by many other creatures, one after the other. The board book contains illustrations and cut-outs for the animals and the noises that they make, so your child also learns various animal sounds. There are similar books in this collection called Classic Books with Holes.

Pepper series and Clifford series also have catchy pictures for toddlers, available in both board and paper formats. I carry the tiny board books available at dollar stores as well.
I usually read each book once aloud which gets him interested and then he reads by himself for the next few minutes, though he may do it by holding them upside down!

Other ways to engage and entertain

• Crayons or magnetic slates to doodle.

• Small toys that can be carried: If not taking a public transport, you can also carry the noisy ones. No limit to your choices.

• Action songs/rhymes. My son has just begun enjoying doing the actions for rhymes like 'itsy bitsy spider' and 'slippery fish'. I can very much count on this way to spend time with him until he reaches the age when it no longer interests him.

• Suitable food and drinks. I also carry finger foods that he likes so he can take as much time he wants to finish. Please do keep lollipops or feeding bottles, whichever appropriate, just in case of ear pains during flights.

If on a plane/bus/train, despite the numerous ways to hold them onto their seat, we must take them for a couple of walks on the aisle (when they aren't required to strap on seat-belts), just as we would go for our own need to stretch. If on a road trip, we can take a few stops when the child can get out for a change.

When travelling by flight, a bassinet always comes handy. It can be used to keep all the baby stuff when the baby is on your lap. However, once the child crosses the 11kg weight limit, the flight crew deny the bassinet once they know. For my last travel, we had booked a separate seat for my son which definitely eased the journey for him and for us parents.

Off-the-topic advice: Don't forget to carry a stroller when going on a vacation trip!

I hope that these tips will be helpful to you. Do let me know how you manage your infant/toddler or even an older kid during your journeys, in comments. Have a happy journey!